When I was in college, a student started a little kiosk, and called it, 'Jus Poppin'...it was popcorn with flavors you could choose.
My favorite was Spike. This is the seasoning she used to make it, but at the time I didn't know what it was. It sounded so adventurous, so edgy, the popcorn with the flavor of Spike. It cost fifty cents, which was less than a slice of pizza at Blondie's pizza, or a mini yogurt with one topping at Yogurt Park (I took lemon with brownie crumbs). Those were each a dollar.
I just found my bottle of Spike while going through some old spices in the kitchen. I normally keep them in a drawer, but the drawer broke. I went to fix it and the nice man at the hardware store didn't measure the wood right. I put everything together, but it won't fit in the drawer slot.
Whatever.
It's the story of my life, the small things to be fixed.
I am happy, very very content.
It is raining. I made soup. My tortilla soup came out nice last night. I froze half of it, and Anthony and I had some when he came home.
Dinner is in the oven. We are having a Trader Joe rolled leg of lamb (sorry for you vegetarians, I'm sorry, my son loves to eat meat and I gave up with his health issues a while back), potato, zucchini, and roasted honey mustard brussel sprouts. I also, for dessert, have apples in the oven. This is my favorite kind of meal--everything cooks in the oven together at the same time.
This is the rest period that comes after our tests. Life is full of them, both tests, and rest periods. Football is on the TV, Anthony is doing homework, and I want to make bracelets. I've had everything out for a month, but I haven't had time to sit and create.
These are the times Spirit assures us through our lessons that 'all is well'.
Earlier today, after my morning meditation, my exercise, and my healings...Ross had me lie on the couch. I got to totally relax, and let my guard down. For the most part, I have my guard UP. It's from having a mother who had a hair trigger temper growing up. She's much better now, and we are close, but there's some habits that are hard to break.
Just today, I found a letter she had written to me but never sent. She had handed it to me about a year ago, but it ended up in a pile on a table I was cleaning.
Here it is--it's to me at age 30 or 31, a junior in Medical School:
November 5, 1995
My dearest Carluzza:
I hope you are feeling better now since we spoke last evening.
Carluzza, please, you have to put the past behind if you are going to reap the rewards in the future.
Please just let go of your past and live in the present.
Carluzza, my Guides are saying all of the above to me. They say to unchain yourself from all of those mental pain and misery you carry around because inevitably it will just bring you more pain and sorrow.
Let all of the cruelty and life's disappointments leave from your heart.
My Guides inform ME someday you will understand why your life was and is this way. They sincerely inform me we choose the Family, the Life, the Mother --especially me --will be born to be able to work out the Karmic Debts from the previous life or lives.
If you engage in the understanding things systematically you will be the loser every time.
They are saying life is a Mystery and our Catholic church also says that.
Our perils, our sorrows are all part of the cleansing of our Sins from previous Lives. We are seldom destined to suffer all of the time, though. We are physical vessels to Cleanse of our Negativity and Emotional frustrations we carry all of the time.
They assure me no one goes unscathed or without hurt. We choose to be born so we can work out more emotional and Spiritual penitence so we can get on to other scintillating places after we cross-over.
We are supposed to accept without resentment all of the life's pain and injustices because it is to be. Think of yourself as a carnal piano or a carnal violin, once in a while you need some tuning. They assure ME if everything went the way we wish, thus no growth would be achieved in the spiritual and emotional sense. We cannot travel in the time strata without some sharp turns and rough and bumpy road. Life is a great Mystery you have to believe this.
Carla, please let the past go and it will set you free.
Remember how you left home at seventeen years old. You have been gone for a very long time now. All of thirteen years from your paternal home. In truth your home is the heart, the joy we share with everyone.
Our Earthly homes are truly over-rated. Carluzza, when you left for college we kept your room like a relic or mausoleum if you will. We never told you some of the life's disappointments that went on here while you were in Berkeley. You can't have it both ways. you have to accept the choice you made to go away. Life keeps on changing and moving. What you are looking for it does not exist, because you wish life was different or more charming or more kind.
Well, reality is that life is not pleasant. Be grateful for one happy day or a happy moment once in a while. Remember you are our oldest daughter. You are our number one daughter. Thomas Paine said, 'You can't go home again' or something like that. Or 'home is never the same again'. What he felt I believe was the emptiness when he came home from college and then the army. Carluzza, nothing stays the same. Everything changes and gets removed or replaced. Nothing lasts forever, whether it is a home, a job, a friend, life is a continual adaptive place. Life is impartial to give us what we wish. Life is not fair. But it is imperative we pick ourselves up and wash the mud off when we fall. People tarnish, people get rusty like a battery.
My personal Guides want you to understand that 'nothing is as it seems or what seems to be'. Everything is an illusion. Everything is perceptions and receptions of what we perceive.
The Guides want you to know once and for all to understand how your sisters have the pain, sorrow, disappointments like others. Just because it doesn't show you have to believe both girls don't lead 'Charmed Lives' at all!
Both girls are trying to survive life's contrasting ways and confusions it brings. Vanessa is totally withdrawn. Christi is forever sick. She never has a healthy day.
Carluzza, pelase forgive and forget your past. It is imperative you pick yourself up and wash the mud and rust and shine like a star and exude confidence and fellowship. You have to rebuke and renounce the adversary from talking to you. Please have a Priest bless you and as I write this I am blessing you darling.
Remember, be gentle and kind and Jesus Christ will bless you in kind.
I wish you well.
Love for always,
Mom xxxxxxxx
My sister Christi had brought a cat into the home as soon as I married and moved out in 1988. I am deathly allergic to cats and have asthma. I felt like the family chose the cat over me. I was in medical school, and Christi had moved out, but the cat remained with the family until 2001 when my mother got her kidney transplant. (I know what happened but am sworn not to tell. The official story is it just died of heartbreak. There was great risk to her from toxoplasmosis in the litter box as someone who is immunosuppressed.)
I was heartbroken and had shared with mom my pain, and anguish for the first time on the phone the might before she wrote the letter. But she wasn't getting rid of the cat, not in 1995. Back then she was in good health. In 1999 she would have kidney failure from Goodpasture syndrome.
Lauren was born in 1997, my first and only niece.. And in 1998 my sister carried her second child with complete placenta previa and bed rest. Spirit had told me the second one wouldn't be easy. My nephew was born in an emergency c-section premature at thirty six weeks gestation.
Now the same lesson is in place, only it is a dog, and my only nephew is allergic, and Christi is experiencing the rejection, feeling the dog is more important to my mother than her son.
It is very sad.
Fortunately, one way or another, I have evolved to the point where I see mom's love, and her honesty in writing this letter to me.
What I wanted really doesn't exist, and it hasn't for a long time. Dad is gone now. Mom has turned into my grandmother--dad's mom used to be the old lady with the orange tree in the back yard, always asking people to come and pick them, and sharing them as if they were gold. Mom used to make light of it and say, 'oranges are five pounds for three dollars!'...Now, in the tradition, mom has the beautiful oranges, and we enjoy picking them for her very much. And in 3D, I am still single, however, in 5D, I have Ross who is fortunately very close.
I am allergic to dogs, but fortunately not to my Vanessa's pomeranian.
I just wanted to share with you the healing and the lessons. And give Ross a chance to speak, if he would like to say a few words.
Ross
I love you.
Everything is happening at the perfect place and time.
Even for Carla, who has had a rough time yesterday. (I just saw lightning! Wow! No thunder yet--ed)
Everything happens for the best.
Now for Monday night 'quarterback'--Carla has has erased herself from the loop of pain and suffering, and has moved on to the better things.
About the education--like what Carla's mother alludes to with all the life is not fair and life lessons--I have no comment. (points to his lips and gestures as if to say his lips are sealed--ed)
(there goes more lightning again!--ed)
clap! clap!
Aloha and Mahalos,
Namaste,
Peace,
Ross and Carla
The Couple
